Development through Alternation

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In order to clarify the implications of the previous sections for some integrated approach to human and social development, it is appropriate to consider the current status of cognitive systemization. This has been the concern of Nicholas Rescher who explores the reason for systematization in the cognitive domain and shows how this is one of the crucial features of the development of knowledge (91). It is to be expected that the pattern of insights and conclusions would be relevant to development in general.

The most deliberate effort to clarify the nature and possibilities of integration has been made through general systems research (84, 85). This has of necessity involved the perspectives of many disciplines. Efforts, such as those of J G Miller (86), have brought a very extensive range of phenomena within the same framework. General systems has not however been very successful in bringing its insights to bear upon the world problematique, despite deliberate efforts to do so (87, 88).

In such a social condition of "structured fluidity", observers can no longer usefully assume that they are standing on solid ground around which events flow (for their intellectual delectation). Such an assumption merely temporarily defines the observer (or an aspect of his personality) as a rigid element in society, within which he is not currently undergoing a process of developmental transformation. In this sense observers are, momentarily, non-participants in the process of human and social development.

It appears from Fuller's work that cycles interlock with greatest facility (i.e. minimum energy condition) in such a way as to form configurations of modes in relatively simple geometrical patterns (e.g. spherical tetrahedron, octahedron, etc) according to the number of cycles. The modes correspond to answer domains effectively stabilized into sets by standing wave interference effects. The portions of cycles linking such modes are then the transformation pathways between them which favour information transfer and learning.

The previous sections clarify the conceptual challenge by which individuals and societies are faced in endeavouring to "ride the tiger" and encompass the development process in which they are immersed. But the very fact that this seems to call for juggling conceptually with seven or more factors simultaneously suggests the need to examine what kind of situation results if this does not prove possible, and what kind of psychosocial structures then emerge.

In the light of the arguments above concerning fourfoldness as providing the basis for the minimal conceivable system through which distinct domains could be related, it is possible, as Mushakoji noted (see above), that recent work on catastrophe theory can clarify the kinds of discontinuity which might then become apparent. Clearly knowledge of the forms such discontinuities take is necessary if the dynamics of such a developing system are to be encompassed conceptually.

In an earlier paper (22) the nature of sets of further design constraints was explored (as detailed above). Three such sets are illustrated here.

The previous section has demonstrated the need for at least four distinct approaches to be able to "contain" the complexity with which we are faced. These are the minimum number of complementary languages through which a "rounded" understanding of human and social development may be achieved.